Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Best Songs of 2013 Songs 1-10

This is a shameless “Best of 2013” post. It is shameless in the sense that we know that two of the songs were released last year, but didn’t hit the radar of very many people until 2013. For anyone who is offended by this fact, we sincerely want to apologize. However, we cannot, because this post is shameless. Besides, the only real benefit to a “Best of” post is derived from the post’s function as a vehicle for sharing music with others. We certainly learn from going to the year-end posts of others

Here is the math that we first presented in the September 1 explanation of the ranking algorithm.

We are providing our ranking using the above formula. For two reasons, we will not provide full descriptions of the formula’s factors and the justifications for the process (the second reason is infinitely more important than the first). First, we don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence - the complex portion of the formula is an adaptation of the well-known arbitrage pricing approach developed in 1973 by Fisher Black and Myron Scholes. We suspect you use this formula for all of your arbitrage-related endeavors, just like us. More importantly, since the complex portion is than multiplied by “0,” the values within the complex portion are irrelevant to the outcome.

Consequently, the ranking of a particular song is based on its value of “P,” where “P” is personal preference. Pretty simple – if we like a song, it ranks higher than songs we don’t like.

Other comments:

1. As noted above, these year-end lists are vehicles for sharing music discoveries. So, this list favors bands on the rise.

2. Out of consideration for people with slower connections, which struggle with loading a large number of songs in a reasonable time, the list will be split into groups of ten.

3. Unlike many other year-end lists, we will start from the top.The other sets of ten songs are available at:

"Grand Union" by Arthur Beatrice (Their debut album drops in March 2014. The band is positioned for an explosion.)

2.

"Sahara" by Bear's Den (When a song has an almost minute long intro portion without an identifiable melody, followed by another 90 seconds before the instruments land on a melody, the rest of the song better deliver. This song delivers)

3.

"Steam Dream" by Andy Clockwise (The Soundcloud waveform foreshadows the energy build that characterizes this song.)

4.

"The Park" by These United States (This is a song we liked immediately, but appreciated its quality only after playing it repeatedly.)

5.

"Diamonds" by The Boxer Rebellion (This a song with the Scottish power guitar we love.)

6.

"Metal & Dust" by London Grammar (Other songs by London Grammar are getting the attention, but this is the one we prefer.)

7.

"My Type" by Saint Motel (Gotta love the use of the horns.)

8. "Pinhole of Light" by Heart-Ships (This one is just flat out fun! The song has warbling, falsetto, and other features that make it a perfect song for certain moods.)